CAPABILITY

Government agency: Digitizing public service in the cloud

Creating an innovative, cost-effective system with managed private cloud capability

OVERVIEW

To help a government agency's website better handle Web traffic, modernize its user experience and reduce costs all while increasing efficiencies, Accenture implemented Project Newcastle. Accenture provided program management and integration services, including all program startup, build-out, transition and day-to-day operations tasks such as: systems engineering, infrastructure engineering, infrastructure operations and maintenance, capacity management, application integration services, monitoring, security and Website Help Desk services. With the project’s private cloud, the agency will be better positioned to handle the rising rate of traffic and electronic transactions.

With Project Newcastle . . . the agency’s website was able to manage 1.77 billion total page views and over 440 million total sessions..

Opportunity

The agency sought to deliver improved public service by enhancing its website through Project Newcastle. The project was designed to be an innovative and cost-effective system that would provide a scalable, managed private cloud capability, enabling one-stop, web-based services for internal and external users. Accenture is the agency's infrastructure services provider (ISP) hosting the new system, a cloud-based hosting environment for its portals, which include: a public portal, a registered portal and a portal related to healthcare. The agency also had an employee portal that they requested Accenture’s assistance in maintaining. Enabling and enhancing each portal would help the agency to:

Maintain and improve system stability to better handle growing demand for electronic transactions and user access to information.

Modernize the user experience for users and ensure they were served in an end-to-end fashion.

Improve the site’s ability to share data and content between user communities.

Minimize maintenance and service needs.

Accenture’s long-term collaboration with the agency dates more than a decade when Accenture Federal Services (AFS) helped launch the agency’s website, which AFS still manages and hosts today. Given this experience, the agency chose Accenture to help design, develop, test, implement and manage Project Newcastle.

SOLUTION

Accenture provided program management and integration services, including all program startup, build-out, transition, and day-to-day operations tasks such as: systems engineering, infrastructure engineering, infrastructure operations and maintenance, capacity management, application integration services and security controls and operational support. Each portal needed to be delivered separately on time and on budget, as regular electronic transaction submission deadlines (quarterly and annual) put intense time pressure on delivery. The goal was to provide cloud support for five years without adding capacity while reducing time to market and costs.

ServiceNow was implemented as part of the registered portal build-out and supported critical activities, including internal change management and other ITIL functions. ServiceNow was subsequently extended to the other portals to provide one consistent system for usability and efficiency, increasing agency access. The Web-enabled ServiceNow tool was easy to customize to customer requirements and required no infrastructure overhead. Using ServiceNow, the project’s Service Desk has been providing Level 1 customer service to the agency’s developers and program managers since January 2013. The team also provided 24/7 support for project production issues, and handled an average of over 1,500 service requests and incidents per month in ServiceNow.

RESULTS

Project Newcastle provided a simpler, more manageable Web environment for the agency’s website and a seamless experience for public and registered users, resulting in lowered costs and improved efficiencies. With Project Newcastle’s private cloud, the agency is better equipped to handle the rising rate of Web traffic and electronic transactions. With Project Newcastle, in 2014 the agency’s website was able to manage 1.77 billion total page views and over 440 million total sessions. During 2015, more than 240 million transactions were processed by the Registered Portal compared to 218 million transactions processed during 2014; an increase of 10 percent.

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